ROME

At dawn on the first day of the new year, Gaius Scribonius Curio arrived at his house on the Palatine, where he was greeted ecstatically by his wife.

“Enough, woman!” he said, hugging the breath out of her, so glad was he to see her. “Where’s my son?”

“You’re just in time to see me give him his first meal of the day,” Fulvia said, took him by the hand and led him to the nursery, where she lifted the snoozing baby Curio from his cradle and held him up proudly. “Isn’t he beautiful? Oh, I always wanted to have a red-haired baby! He’s your image, and won’t he be naughty? Urchins always are.”

“I haven’t seen any urchin in him. He’s absolutely placid.”

“That’s because his world is ordered and his mother transmits no anxieties to him.” Fulvia nodded dismissal to the nursery maid and slipped her robe off her shoulders and arms.

For a moment she stood displaying those engorged breasts, milk beading their nipples: to Curio, the most wonderful sight he had ever seen—and all because of him. His loins ached with want of her, but he moved to a chair as she sat down in another and held the baby, still half asleep, to one breast. The reflex initiated, baby Curio began to suck with long, audible gulps, his tiny hands curled contentedly against his mother’s brown skin.

“I wouldn’t care,” he said in a gruff voice, “if I were to die tomorrow, Fulvia, having known this. All those years of Clodius, and I never realized what a true mother you are. No wet nurses, just you. How efficient you are. How much motherhood is a part of living for you, neither a nuisance nor a universe.”

She looked surprised. “Babies are lovely, Curio. They’re the ultimate expression of what exists between a husband and wife. They need little in one way, lots in another. It gives me pleasure to do the natural things with them and for them. When they drink my milk, I’m exalted. It’s my milk, Curio! I make it!” She grinned wickedly. “However, I’m perfectly happy to let the nursery maid change the diapers and let the laundry maid wash them.”

“Proper,” he said, leaning back to watch.

“He’s four months old today,” she said.

“Yes, and I’ve missed three nundinae of seeing him grow.”

“How was Ravenna?”

He shrugged, grimaced.

“Ought I to have asked, how is Caesar?”

“I don’t honestly know, Fulvia.”

“Haven’t you talked with him?”

“Hours every day for three nundinae.”

“And yet you don’t know.”

“He keeps his counsel while he discusses every aspect of the situation lucidly and dispassionately,” said Curio, frowning and leaning forward to caress the undeniably red fuzz on his son’s working scalp. “If one wanted to hear a master Greek logician, the man would be a disappointment after Caesar. Everything is weighed and defined.”

“So?”

“So one comes away understanding everything except the single aspect one wants most to understand.”

“Which is?”

“What he intends to do.”

“Will he march on Rome?”

“I wish I could say yes, I wish I could say no, meum mel. But I can’t. I have no idea.”

“They don’t think he will, you know. The boni and Pompeius.”

“Fulvia!” Curio exclaimed, sitting up straight. “Pompeius can’t possibly be that naive, even if Cato is.”

“I’m right,” she said, detaching baby Curio from her nipple, sitting him up on her lap to face her and bending him gently forward until he produced a loud eructation. When she picked him up again, she transferred him to her other breast. This done, she resumed speaking as if there had been no pause. “They remind me of certain small animals— the kind which own no real aggression, but make a mock show of it because they’ve learned that such mock shows work. Until the elephant comes along and treads on them because he simply doesn’t see them.” She sighed. “The strain in Rome is enormous, husband. Everyone is petrified. Yet the boni keep on behaving like those mock-aggressive little animals. They posture and prate in the Forum, they send the Senate and the Eighteen into absolute paroxysms of fear. While Pompeius says all sorts of weighty and gloomy things about civil war being inevitable to mice like poor old Cicero. But he doesn’t believe what he says, Curio. He knows that Caesar has only one legion this side of the Alps, and he has had no evidence that more are coming. He knows that were more to come, they’d be in Italian Gaul by now. The boni know those things too. Don’t you see? The louder the fuss they make and the more upsetting it is, the greater their victory will appear when Caesar gives in. They want to cover themselves in glory.”

“What if Caesar doesn’t give in?”

“They’ll be stepped on.” She looked at Curio keenly. “You must have some sort of instinct about what will happen, Gaius. What does your instinct say?”

“That Caesar is still trying to solve his dilemma legally.”

“Caesar doesn’t dither.”

“I am aware of that.”

“Therefore it’s all sorted out in his mind already.”

“Yes, in that I think you’re right, wife.”

“Are you here for a purpose, or are you home for good?”

“I’ve been entrusted with a letter from Caesar to the Senate. He wants it read today at the inaugural meeting of the new consuls.”

“Who’s to read it out?”

“Antonius. I’m a privatus these days; they wouldn’t listen.”

“Can you stay with me for a few days at least?”

“I hope I never have to leave again, Fulvia.”

Shortly thereafter Curio departed for the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol, wherein the New Year’s Day meeting of the Senate was always held. When he returned several hours later, he brought Mark Antony with him.

The preparations for dinner took some moments; prayers had to be said, an offering made to the Lares and Penates, togas doffed and folded, shoes removed, feet washed and dried. During all of which Fulvia held her peace, then usurped the lectus imus for herself—she was one of those scandalously forward women who insisted on reclining to eat.

“Tell me everything,” she said as soon as the first course was laid out and the servants had retired.

Antony ate, Curio talked.

“Our wolfing friend here read Caesar’s letter out so loudly that nothing could overcome his voice,” said Curio, grinning.

“What did Caesar have to say?”

“He proposed that either he should be allowed to keep his provinces and his army, or else that all other holders of imperium should step down at one and the same moment he did.”

“Ah!” Fulvia exclaimed, satisfied. “He’ll march.”

“What makes you think that?” asked her husband.

“He made an absolutely absurd, unacceptable request.”

“Well, I know that, but…”

“She’s right,” mumbled Antony, hand and mouth full of eggs. “He’ll march.”

“Go on, what happened next?”

“Lentulus Crus was in the chair. He refused to throw Caesar’s proposal open to debate. Instead, he filibustered on the general state of the nation.”

“But Marcellus Minor is the senior consul; he has the fasces for January! Why wasn’t he in the chair?”

“Went home after the religious ceremonies,” mumbled Antony, “Headache or something.”

“If you’re going to speak, Marcus Antonius, take your snout out of the trough!” said Fulvia sharply.

Startled, Antony swallowed and achieved a penitent smile. “Sorry,” he said.

“She’s a strict mother,” said Curio, eyes adoring her.

“What happened next?” asked the strict mother.

“Metellus Scipio launched into a speech,” said Curio, and sighed. “Ye Gods, he’s boring! Luckily he was too eager to get to his peroration to waffle on interminably. He put a motion to the House. The Law of the Ten Tribunes was invalid, he said, and that meant Caesar had no right whatsoever to his provinces or his army. He would have to appear inside Rome as a privatus to contest the next consular elections. Scipio then moved that Caesar be ordered to dismiss his army by a date to be fixed, or else be declared a public enemy.”

“Nasty,” said Fulvia.

“Oh, very. But the House was all on his side. Hardly anyone voted against his motion.”

“It didn’t pass, surely!”

Antony gulped hastily, then said with commendable clarity, “Quintus Cassius and I vetoed it.”

“Oh, well done!”

*

Pompey, however, didn’t consider the veto well done at all. When the debate resumed in the House on the second day of January and resulted in another tribunician veto, he lost his temper. The strain was telling on him more than on anyone else in that whole anguished, terrified city; Pompey had the most to lose.

“We’re getting nowhere!” he snarled to Metellus Scipio. “I want to see this business finished! It’s ridiculous! Day after day, month after month—if we’re not careful, the anniversary of the Kalends of March last year will roll around and we’ll still have come no closer to putting Caesar in his place! I have the feeling that Caesar is running rings around me, and I don’t like that feeling one little bit! It’s time the comedy was ended! It’s time the Senate acted once and for all! If they can’t secure a law in the Popular Assembly to strip Caesar of everything, then they’ll have to pass the Senatus Consultum Ultimum and leave the matter to me!”

He clapped three times, the signal for his steward.

“I want a message sent immediately to every senator in Rome,” he told his steward curtly. “They are to report to me here two hours from now.”

Metellus Scipio looked worried. “Pompeius, is that wise?” he ventured. “I mean, summon censors and consulars?”

“Yes, summon! I’m fed up, Scipio! I want this business with Caesar settled!”

Like most men of action, Pompey found it extremely difficult to coexist with indecision. And, like most men of action, Pompey wanted to be in absolute command. Not pushed and pulled by a parcel of incompetent, shilly-shallying senators who he knew were not his equals in anything. The situation was totally exasperating!

Why hadn’t Caesar given in? And, since he hadn’t given in, why was he still sitting in Ravenna with only one legion? Why wasn’t he doing something? No, clearly he didn’t intend to march on Rome—but if he didn’t, what did he think he was going to do? Give in, Caesar! Give up, give way! But he didn’t. He wouldn’t. What tricks did he have up his sleeve? How could he extricate himself from this predicament if he didn’t intend to give in, nor intend to march? What was going on in his mind? Did he think to prolong this senatorial impasse until the Nones of Quinctilis and the consular elections? But he would never get permission to stand in absentia, even if he managed to hang onto his imperium. Was it in his mind to send a few thousand of his loyalest soldiers to Rome on an innocent furlough at the time of the elections? He’d done that already, to secure the consulship for Pompeius and Crassus six years ago. But nothing got round the in absentia, so why? Why? Did he think to terrorize the Senate into yielding permission to stand in absentia? By sending thousands of his loyalest soldiers on furlough?

Up and down, up and down; Pompey paced the floor in torment until his steward came, very timidly, to inform him that there were many senators waiting in the atrium.

“I’ve had enough!” he shouted, striding into the room. “I have had enough!”

Perhaps one hundred and fifty men stood gaping at him in astonishment, from Appius Claudius Pulcher Censor to the humble urban quaestor Gaius Nerius. A pair of angry blue eyes raked the ranks and noted the omissions: Lucius Calpurnius Piso Censor, both the consuls, many of the consulars, every senator known to be a partisan of Caesar’s and several who were known not to favor Caesar—but didn’t favor being summoned by a man with no legal right to summon either. Still, there were sufficient to make a good beginning.

“I have had enough!” he said again, climbing onto a bench of priceless pink marble. “You cowards! You fools! You vacillating milksops! I am the First Man in Rome, and I am ashamed to call myself the First Man in Rome! Look at you! For ten months this farce has been going on over the provinces and the army of Gaius Julius Caesar, and you’ve gotten nowhere! Absolutely nowhere!”

He bowed to Cato, Favonius, Ahenobarbus, Metellus Scipio and two of the three Marcelli. “Honored colleagues, I do not include you in these bitter words, but I wanted you here to bear witness. The Gods know you’ve fought long and hard to terminate the illegal career of Gaius Caesar. But you get no real support, and this evening I intend to remedy that.”

Back to the rest, some of them, like Appius Claudius Pulcher Censor, none too pleased. “I repeat! You fools! You cowards! You weak, whining, puny collection of has-beens and nowheres! I am fed up!” He drew a long, sucking breath. “I have tried. I have been patient. I have held back. I have suffered all of you. I have wiped your arses and held your heads while you puked. And don’t stand there looking mortally offended, Varro! If the shoe fits, wear it! The Senate of Rome is supposed to set the tone and serve as the example to every other body politic and body public from one end of Rome’s empire to the other. And the Senate of Rome is a disgrace! Every last one of you is a disgrace! Here you are, faced by one man—one man!—yet for ten months you’ve let him shit all over you! You’ve wavered and shivered, argued and sniveled, voted and voted and voted and voted—and gotten nowhere! Ye Gods, how Gaius Caesar must be laughing!”

By this everyone was stunned far beyond indignation; few of the men present had served in the field with Pompey in a situation which revealed his ugly side, but many of them were now grasping why Pompey got things done. Their affable, sweet-tempered, self-deprecating Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was a martinet. Many of them had seen Caesar lose his temper, and still shivered in their boots at the memory of it. Now they saw Pompey lose his temper, and shivered in their boots. And they began to wonder: which of the two, Caesar or Pompey, would prove the harder master?

“You need me!” roared Pompey from the superior height of his bench. “You need me, and never forget it! You need me! I’m all that stands between you and Caesar. I’m your only refuge because I’m the only one among the lot of you who can beat Caesar on a field of battle. So you’d better start being nice to me. You’d better start bending over backward to please me. You’d better smarten up your act. You’d better resolve this mess. You’d better pass a decree and procure a law in the Assembly to strip Caesar of army, provinces and imperium! I can’t do it for you because I’m only one man with one vote, and you haven’t got the guts to institute martial law and put me in charge!”

He bared his teeth. “I tell you straight, Conscript Fathers, that I don’t like you! If I were ever in a position to proscribe the lot of you, I would! I’d throw so many of you off the Tarpeian Rock that you’d end in falling on a senatorial mattress! I have had enough. Gaius Caesar is defying you and defying Rome. That has to stop. Deal with him! And don’t expect mercy from me if I see any one of you tending to favor Caesar! The man’s an outcast, an outlaw, though you don’t have the guts to declare him one legally! I warn you, from this day on I will regard any man who favors Caesar as an outcast, as an outlaw!”

He waved his hand. “Go home! Think about it! And then, by Jupiter, do something! Rid me of this Caesar!”

They turned and left without a word.

Pompey jumped down, beaming. “Oh, that feels better!” he said to the little group of boni who remained.

“You certainly rammed a red-hot poker up their arses,” said Cato, voice for once devoid of expression.

“Pah! They needed it, Cato. Our way one day, Caesar’s way the next. I’m fed up. I want an end to the business.”

“So we gathered,” said Marcellus Major dryly. “It wasn’t politic, Pompeius. You can’t order the Senate of Rome around like raw recruits on a drill ground.”

“Someone’s got to!” snapped Pompey.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” said Marcus Favonius.

“You’d better hope you never see me like this again,” said Pompey grimly. “Where are the consuls? Neither of them came.”

“They couldn’t come, Pompeius,” said Marcus Marcellus. “They are the consuls; their imperium outranks yours. To have come would have been tantamount to acknowledging you their master.”

“Servius Sulpicius wasn’t here either.”

“I don’t think,” said Gaius Marcellus Major, walking toward the door, “that Servius Sulpicius answers summonses.”

A moment later only Metellus Scipio was left. He gazed at his son-in-law reproachfully.

“What’s wrong with you?” demanded Pompey aggressively.

“Nothing, nothing! Except perhaps that I think this wasn’t wise, Magnus.” He sighed dolefully. “Not wise at all.”

An opinion echoed the next day, which happened to be Cicero’s fifty-seventh birthday, and the day upon which he arrived outside Rome to take up residence in a villa on the Pincian Hill; granted a triumph, he could not cross the pomerium. Atticus came out of the city to welcome him, and was quick to apprise him of the extraordinary scene of the evening before.

“Who told you?” asked Cicero, horrified at the details.

“Your friend the senator Rabirius Postumus, not the banker Rabirius Postumus,” said Atticus.

“Old Rabirius Postumus? Surely you mean the son.”

“I mean old Rabirius Postumus. He’s got a new lease on life now that Perperna is failing, wants the cachet of being the oldest.”

“What did Magnus do?” asked Cicero anxiously.

“Intimidated most of the Senate still in Rome. Not many of them had seen Pompeius like that—so angry, so scathing. No elegant language, just a traditional diatribe—but delivered with real venom. He said he wanted an end to the senatorial dithering about Caesar. What he really wants he didn’t say, but everyone was able to guess.” Atticus frowned. “He threatened to proscribe, which may give you an idea of how upset he was. He followed that by threatening to throw every senator from the Tarpeian Rock—until the last fell on a mattress of the first, was how he put it. They’re terrified!”

“But the Senate has tried—and tried hard!” protested Cicero, reliving those hours at the trial of Milo. “What does Magnus think it can do? The tribunician veto is inalienable!”

“He wants the Senate to enact a Senatus Consultum Ultimum and institute martial law with himself in command. Nothing less will satisfy him,” Atticus declared strongly. “Pompeius is wearing down under the strain. He wishes it were over, and for most of his life his wishes have come true. He is an atrociously spoiled man, used to having things all his own way. For which the Senate is at least partially responsible, Cicero! Its members have given in to him for decades. They’ve dowered him with one special command after another and let him get away with things they won’t condone in, for instance, Caesar. A man with the birthright is now demanding that the Senate treat him as it has treated Pompeius. Who do you think is really at the back of opposition to that?”

“Cato. Bibulus when he’s here. The Marcelli. Ahenobarbus. Metellus Scipio. A few other diehards,” said Cicero.

“Yes, but they’re all political creatures, which Pompeius is not,” said Atticus patiently. “Without Pompeius, they couldn’t have marshaled the resistance they have. Pompeius wants no rivals, and Caesar is a formidable rival.”

“Oh, if only Julia hadn’t died!” said Cicero miserably.

“That’s a non sequitur, Marcus. In the days when Julia was alive, Caesar was no threat. Or so Pompeius saw it. He’s not a subtle creature, nor gifted with foresight. If Julia were alive today, Pompeius would be behaving no differently.”

“Then I must see Magnus today,” said Cicero with decision.

“With what intention?”

“To try to persuade him to come to an agreement with Caesar. Or, if he refuses, to quit Rome, retire to Spain and his army, and wait the matter out. My feeling is that, despite Cato and the rabid boni, the Senate will come to some sort of compromise with Caesar if they believe they haven’t got Magnus to fall back on. They see Magnus as their soldier, the one capable of beating Caesar.”

“And I note,” said Atticus, “that you don’t think he can.”

“My brother doesn’t think he can, and Quintus would know.”

“Where is Quintus?”

“He’s here, but of course he’s not exiled from the city, so he’s gone home to see if your sister has improved in temper.”

Atticus laughed until the tears came. “Pomponia? Improve in temper? Pompeius will find harmony with Caesar before that can ever happen!”

“Why is it that neither of us Cicerones can manage to exist in domestic peace? Why are our wives such incorrigible shrews?”

Said Atticus, pragmatist supreme, “Because, my dear Marcus, both you and Quintus had to marry for money, and neither of you has the birth to find moneyed wives other men fancied.”

Thus squelched, Cicero walked from the Pincian Hill across the sward of the Campus Martius (where his little contingent of Cilician soldiers was camped, awaiting his modest triumphal parade) to that dinghy behind the yacht.

But when Cicero put his proposal to Pompey, to quit Rome and retire to Spain, he was rejected with loathing.

“I’d be seen to be backing down!” Pompey said, outraged.

“Magnus, that’s sheer nonsense! Pretend to agree to Caesar’s demands—after all, you’re not in the consul’s chair, you’re just another proconsul—and then settle down in Spain to wait. It’s a foolish farmer who has two prize rams and keeps them in the same meadow. Once you’re out of the Roman meadow, there’s no contest. You’ll be safe and well in Spain, an onlooker. With your army! Caesar will think twice about that. While you’re in Italia, his troops are closer to him than yours are to you— and his troops lie between yours and Italia. Go to Spain, Magnus, please!”

“I’ve never heard such rubbish,” growled Pompey. “No! No!”

*

While the debate in the House was raging on the sixth day of January, Cicero sent a polite note to Lucius Cornelius Balbus, asking that he come out to the Pincian Hill.

“Surely you want a peaceful solution,” said Cicero when Balbus arrived. “Jupiter, you’ve lost weight!”

“Believe me, Marcus Cicero, I do, and yes, I have,” said the little Gadetanian banker.

“I saw Magnus three days ago.”

“He won’t see me, alas,” sighed Balbus. “Not since Aulus Hirtius left Rome without seeing him. I got the blame.”

“Magnus won’t co-operate,” said Cicero abruptly.

“Oh, if only there were some sort of common ground!”

“Well,” said Cicero, “I’ve been thinking. Day and night, I’ve been thinking. And I may have found a possibility.”

“Tell me, please!”

“It will require some work on your part, Balbus, to convince Caesar. Oppius and the rest too, I imagine.”

“Look at me, Marcus Cicero! Work has pared me away to nothing.”

“It will necessitate an urgent letter to Caesar, best written by you, Oppius, and Rabirius Postumus.”

“That part is easy. What should it say?”

“As soon as you leave, I’m going back to Magnus. And I will tell him that Caesar has consented to give up everything except one legion and Illyricum. Can you persuade Caesar to agree to it?”

“Yes, I’m sure we can if all of us add our weight. Caesar truly does prefer a peaceful settlement, you have my word on it. But you must see that he cannot give up everything. If he does, he will perish. They’ll try him and exile him. However, Illyricum and one legion are enough. He goes from day to day, Marcus Cicero. If he keeps his imperium, he’ll deal with the consular elections when the time comes. A man of more infinite resources I do not know.”

“Nor I,” said Cicero, rather despondently.

Back to Pompey’s villa, back to another confrontation; though Cicero was not to know that Pompey had passed a series of bad nights. Once the cathartic relief of that outburst to the senators had dissipated, the First Man in Rome began to feel the recoil and remember that no one among the boni, including his father-in-law, had approved of what he said to the senators. Or the tone in which he said it. Autocratic arrogance. Unwise. Almost four days later Pompey was regretting his loss of control; temper had translated into elation, and then, inevitably, into depression. Yes, they needed him. But yes, he needed them. And he had alienated them. He knew it because no one had come to see him since, nor had any of the meetings of the Senate been held outside the pomerium. It was all going on without him, the bitter and acrimonious debates, the vetoing, the defiance of that oaf Antonius and a Cassius. A Cassius! Of a clan who ought to know better. He had whipped the horse, but not understood that he was whipping a mule. Oh, how to get out of this bind? What might the Senate do? Not put him in control, even if it did institute martial law. Why on earth had he spoken of conscriptions and the Tarpeian Rock? Too far, Magnus, too far! No matter how much it might deserve that fate, never castigate the Senate like raw recruits.

Thus Cicero found the First Man in a more malleable and doubting frame of mind, realized it, and struck hard.

“I have it on impeccable authority, Magnus, that Caesar will agree to keep Illyricum and one legion only, that he will give up everything else,” said Cicero. “If you consent to this accommodation and use your influence to obtain it, you’ll be a hero. You will have single-handedly averted civil war. All of Rome save Cato and a very few other men will vote you a thanksgiving, statues, every kind of honor. We both understand that the conviction and exile of Caesar are Cato’s avowed goals, but they’re not really your goals, are they? What you object to is being treated in like manner to Caesar—what he loses, you must lose. But this latest proposal doesn’t mention you or yours.”

Pompey was visibly brightening. “It’s true that I don’t hate Caesar the way Cato does, nor am I as rigid a man as Cato. I don’t say, mind you, that I won’t be voting against letting Caesar stand for the consulship in absentia—but that’s a separate issue, and some months off. You’re right, the most important thing at the moment is to avert the threat of civil war. And if Illyricum plus one legion will satisfy Caesar… if he doesn’t require the same of me… well, why not? Yes, Cicero, why not? I’ll agree to it. Caesar can keep Illyricum and one legion if he gives up everything else. With one legion he’s powerless. Yes! I agree!”

Cicero sagged with the relief of it. “Magnus, I am not a drinking man, but I need a drop of your excellent wine.”

At which moment Cato and the junior consul Lentulus Crus walked into the atrium, from which Cicero and Pompey hadn’t moved, so anxious had Cicero been to make his point. Oh, the tragic misfortune of that! If they’d been ensconced in Pompey’s study, the visitors would have had to be announced and Cicero would have persuaded Pompey not to see them. As it was, Pompey was unprotected.

“Join us!” said Pompey to the newcomers jovially. “We’re about to drink to a peaceful accommodation with Caesar.”

“You’re what!” asked Cato, stiffening.

“Caesar has agreed to give up everything except Illyricum and one legion without asking me for anything more than my consent. No idiocies like my having to give up everything too. The threat of civil war is over; Caesar is rendered impotent,” said Pompey with huge satisfaction. “We can deal with his candidacy for the consulship when the time comes. I have averted civil war!”

Cato emitted a sound somewhere between a screech and a howl, put his hands to his scalp and literally wrenched two clumps of hair out of his head. “You cretin!” he shrieked. “You fat, self-satisfied, over-rated, over-aged boy wonder! What do you mean, you’ve averted civil war? You’ve given in to the greatest enemy the Republic has ever had!” He ground his teeth, he raked at his cheeks with his nails, he advanced on Pompey still clutching those two hanks of hair. Pompey backed away, stupefied.

“You’ve taken it upon yourself to accommodate Caesar, have you? Who says you have any right to do that? You’re the Senate’s servant, Pompeius, not the Senate’s master! And you’re supposed to be teaching that lesson to Caesar, not collaborating with him on bringing down the Republic!”

Pompey in a temper was almost as awesome, but Pompey had a fatal weakness; once someone threw him off balance (as Sertorius had in Spain), he couldn’t manage to regain his equilibrium nor snatch back control of the situation. Cato had wrested the offensive from him, tossed him into a state of confusion which prevented his growing angry in return, rendered him incapable of finding the right answers to explain himself. Mind whirling, he gazed at the most intimidating display of rage he had ever encountered, and he quailed. This wasn’t a temper, it was a furor.

Cicero tried. “Cato, Cato, don’t do this!” he shouted. “Use your ammunition in the proper way—force Caesar into court, not into civil war! Control yourself!”

A big and testy man, Lentulus Crus grasped Cicero by the left shoulder and spun him round, then began pushing him across the room. “Shut up! Keep out of it! Shut up! Keep out of it!” he barked, each bark punctuated by a punch to the chest which sent Cicero reeling backward.

“You are not Dictator!” Cato was screaming at Pompey. “You do not run Rome! You have no authority to enter into bargains with a traitor behind our backs! Illyricum and one legion, eh? And you think that a trifling concession, eh? It is not! It—is—not! It is a major concession! A major concession! And I say to you, Gnaeus Pompeius, that absolutely no concessions can be made to Caesar! He cannot be conceded the tip of a dead Roman’s finger! Caesar must be taught that the Senate is his master, that he is not the Senate’s master! And if you need to be taught the same lesson, Pompeius, then I am just the man to drum it into you! You want to ally yourself with Caesar, do you? Very well! Ally yourself with Caesar! Caesar the traitor! And suffer the same fate as Caesar the traitor! For I swear to you by all our Gods that I will bring you down lower than I bring Caesar down! I will have your imperium, your provinces and your army stripped from you in the same breath as Caesar’s are stripped from him! All I have to do is say so in the House! And the House will vote to do it, and there will be no tribunician veto because you do not command the loyalty of a Curio or an Antonius! The only legions you have at your disposal are two legions which owe their loyalty to Caesar! Your own legions are a thousand miles away in Spain! So how can you stop me, Pompeius? I’ll do it, you traitor! And I’ll glory in doing it! This is no social men’s club you elected to join! The boni are utterly committed to bringing Caesar down. And we will just as happily bring anyone down who sides with him—even you! Then perhaps it’s you who will be proscribed, you who will be thrown from the Tarpeian Rock! Did you think we boni would condone those threats? Well, we won’t! Nor will we support any man who dares to flout the authority of the Senate of Rome!”

“Stop! Stop!” gasped Pompey, extending both hands to Cato with palms out. “Stop, Cato, I beg of you! You’re right! You—are—right! I admit it! Cicero talked me into it, I was—I was—I was weak! It was just a weak moment! No one’s come to see me for three days! What was I to think?”

But Cato enraged was not Pompey enraged. Pompey snapped out of a temper as quickly as he fell into it, whereas it took a long time to calm Cato down, to unstopper his ears and persuade them to hear the sounds of surrender. He ranted for what seemed endless hours before he shut his mouth and stood, trembling.

“Sit down, Cato,” said Pompey, fussing about him like an old woman about her lapdog. “Here, sit down, do!” He rushed to pour a goblet of wine, rushed back to hand it to Cato, wrapping both hands about its bowl and, with a shudder, removing the hair Cato still held. “There now, drink it down, please! You’re right—I was wrong—I admit it freely! Blame Cicero, he caught me in a weak moment.” He gazed pleadingly at Lentulus Crus. “Have some wine, do! Let’s all sit down and sort out our differences, for there are none cannot be sorted out, I promise you. Please, Lucius Crus, have some wine!”

“Ohhhhh!” cried Cicero from the far side of the room.

But Pompey paid him no attention; Cicero turned and left to plod back across the Campus Martius to the Pincian Hill, trembling almost as hard as Cato had.

That was the end of it, then. That was the watershed. There could be no going back now. So close, so close! Oh, why did those two boni irascibles have to arrive at just the wrong moment?

“Well,” he said to himself when he reached home and began to write a note to Balbus, break the news, “if there is civil war, there is only one man to blame. Cato.”

*

At dawn the next day, the seventh one of January, the Senate met in the temple of Jupiter Stator, a site which prevented the attendance of Pompey. Though the pallid Gaius Marcellus Minor was present, he handed the meeting to his junior colleague, Lentulus Crus, as soon as the prayers and offerings were made.

“I do not intend to orate,” Lentulus Crus said harshly, his florid face mottled with bluish patches, his breathing labored. “It is time and more than time, Conscript Fathers, that we dealt with our present crisis in the only sensible way. I propose that we pass the Senatus Consultum Ultimum, and that the terms of it be to grant the consuls, praetors, tribunes of the plebs, consulars and promagistrates within the vicinity of Rome full authority to protect the interests of the State against the tribunician veto.”

A huge buzz of noise erupted, for the senators were genuinely astonished at the peculiar wording of this ultimate decree—and equally astonished that it did not specify Pompey by name.

“You can’t do that!” roared Mark Antony, leaping off the tribunician bench. “You are proposing to instruct the tribunes of the plebs to protect the State against their own power to veto? It can’t be done! Nor can a Senatus Consultum Ultimum be conjured into force to muzzle the tribunes of the plebs! The tribunes of the plebs are the servants of the State—always have been, always will be! The terms of your decree, junior consul, are completely unconstitutional! The ultimate decree is passed to protect the State from treasonous activity, and I defy you to say that any one of the ten members of my College is a traitor! But I will take the matter to the Plebs, I promise you! And have you thrown from the Tarpeian Rock for attempting to obstruct us in our sworn duty!”

“Lictors, remove this man,” said Lentulus Crus.

“I veto that, Lentulus! I veto your ultimate decree!”

“Lictors, remove this man.”

“They’ll have to remove me too!” yelled Quintus Cassius.

“Lictors, remove both these men.”

But when the dozen togate lictors attempted to lay hands on Antony and Quintus Cassius, it was an unequal fight; it took the other several dozen lictors present in the chamber to grasp hold of the furiously fighting Antony and the equally angry Quintus Cassius, who were finally ejected, bruised and bleeding, togas torn and disarrayed, into the upper Forum.

“Bastards!” growled Curio, who had quit the chamber when the lictors moved.

“Bigots,” said Marcus Caelius Rufus. “Where to now?”

“Down to the well of the Comitia,” said Antony, hand out to prevent Quintus Cassius from rearranging his toga. “No, Quintus! Don’t tidy yourself up, whatever you do! We’re going to remain exactly the way we are until we get to Caesar in Ravenna. Let him see with his own eyes what Lentulus Crus did.”

Having drawn a very large crowd—no difficulty these days, when so much apprehension and bewilderment pervaded the thoughts of those who liked to frequent the Forum—Antony displayed his wounds and the wounds of Quintus Cassius.

“See us? The tribunes of the plebs have been manhandled as well as prevented from doing their duty!” he shouted. “Why? To protect the interests of a very few men who want to rule in Rome their way, which is not the accepted and acceptable way! They want to banish rule of the People and replace it with rule of the Senate! Take heed, fellow plebeians! Take heed, those patricians who do not belong to the ranks of the boni! The days of the People’s Assemblies are numbered! When Cato and his boni minions take over the Senate—which they are doing at this very moment!—they will use Pompeius and military force to remove all say in government from you! They will use Pompeius and military force to strike down men like Gaius Caesar, who has always stood as protector of the People against the power of the Senate!”

He looked over the heads of the crowd to where a large group of lictors was marching down the Forum from Jupiter Stator. “This has to be a very short speech, Quirites! I can see the servants of the Senate coming to take me to prison, and I refuse to go to prison! I’m going to Gaius Caesar in Ravenna, together with my courageous colleague Quintus Cassius and these two champions of the People, Gaius Curio and Marcus Caelius! I’m going to show Gaius Caesar what the Senate has done! And do not forget, be you plebeian or patrician, that Gaius Caesar is the victim of a very small, very vindictive minority of senators who will not tolerate opposition! They have persecuted him, they have impugned his dignitas—and your dignitas, Quirites!—and they have made a mockery of Rome’s constitution! Guard your rights, Quirites, and wait for Caesar to avenge you!”

With a broad grin and a genial wave of the hand, Antony left the rostra amid huge cheers, his three companions around him. By the time the lictors had managed to penetrate the crowd, they were long gone.

In the temple of Jupiter Stator things were going very much better for the boni. Few indeed were present to vote against the Senatus Consultum Ultimum, which passed almost unanimously. Most interesting, for those with the detachment to notice it, was the conduct and deportment of the senior consul, Gaius Marcellus Minor; he sat looking ill, said nothing, dragged himself to the right of the floor when it came time to vote, then returned wearily to his curule chair. His brother and his cousin, the ex-consuls, were far more vociferous.

By the time the lictors returned from the well of the Comitia empty-handed, the vote was taken and the decree of martial law properly recorded.

“I am adjourning the House until tomorrow,” said Lentulus Crus, satisfied, “when it will meet in the Curia Pompeia on the Campus Martius. Our esteemed consular and proconsul Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus cannot be excluded from further deliberations.”

“I suppose,” said Servius Sulpicius Rufus, who had been the senior consul in Marcus Marcellus’s year, “this means we have declared war on Gaius Caesar. Who has not moved.”

“We declared war,” said Marcellus Major, “when we offered Gnaeus Pompeius a sword.”

“It was Caesar who declared war!” Cato hollered. “When he refused to accept the directives of this body and obey them, he outlawed himself!”

“Yet,” said Servius Sulpicius gently, “you have not declared him hostis in your ultimate decree. He is not yet officially a public enemy. Ought you not to do that?”

“Yes, we ought!” said Lentulus Crus, whose high color and audible breathing indicated an unhappy state of affairs within his body, though it was Marcellus Minor who looked sick.

“You cannot,” said Lucius Cotta, Caesar’s uncle, and one of those who had voted against the ultimate decree. “So far Caesar has made no move to go to war, yet you have declared war. Until he does make that move, he is not hostis and cannot be declared hostis.”

“The important thing,” said Cato, “is to strike first!”

“I agree, Marcus Cato,” said Lentulus Crus. “That is why we meet tomorrow on the Campus Martius, where our military expert can advise us on how to strike, and where.”

*

But when the Senate met in Pompey’s curia the next day, the eighth one of January, its military expert, Pompey, demonstrated clearly to everyone that he had not thought about striking first, nor striking anywhere. He concentrated on his military strength rather than on his military tactics.

“We must remember,” he said to the House, “that all Caesar’s legions are disaffected. If Caesar should ask them to march, I very much doubt they would consent. As to our own troops, there are now three legions in Italia, thanks to vigorous recruiting in the last few days. There are seven legions belonging to me in the Spains, and I have already sent word to mobilize them. The pity of it is that at this time of season, they cannot sail. Therefore it is important that they start out by road before Gaius Caesar tries to intercept them.” He smiled cheerfully. “I assure you, Conscript Fathers, that there is no need to worry.”

The meetings went on daily, and much was done to prepare for every eventuality. When Faustus Sulla moved that King Juba of Numidia be declared a Friend and Ally of the Roman People, Gaius Marcellus Minor emerged from his apathy to commend Faustus Sulla’s motion; it passed. When, however, Faustus Sulla then suggested that he go personally to Mauretania to talk to Kings Bocchus and Bogud—a strategy Marcellus Minor again applauded—Philippus’s son, a tribune of the plebs, vetoed it.

“You’re like your father, a fence-sitter!” snarled Cato.

“No, Marcus Cato, I do assure you. If Caesar makes any hostile move, we will need Faustus Sulla here,” said Philippus Junior firmly.

The most interesting aspect of this exchange concerned the tribunician veto itself; with a Senatus Consultum Ultimum in effect protecting the State against the tribunician veto, young Philippus’s veto was accepted.

Ah, but all that was as nothing compared to the exquisite pleasure of stripping Caesar of his imperium, his provinces and his army! The Senate appointed Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus the new governor of the further Gauls, and the ex-praetor Marcus Considius Nonianus the new governor of Italian Gaul and Illyricum. Caesar was now a privatus; nothing protected him. But Cato suffered too; though he had never wanted a province, he now found himself appointed governor of Sicily. Africa went to Lucius Aelius Tubero, a man whose loyalty to the boni was suspect but whose governorship was inevitable; the pool of available men had shrunk to nothing. This gave Pompey an excellent excuse to nominate Appius Claudius Censor to be governor of Greece as distinct from Macedonia, even though he had already had a province, and to suggest that for the moment nothing be done in Macedonia save to let it continue under the care of its quaestor, Titus Antistius. Because it was not generally known that Pompey had resolved to fight Caesar in the East rather than on Italian soil, the significance of sending Appius Claudius to Greece and preserving Macedonia for the future did not impinge on most of the senators, whose thinking had gone no further than whether Caesar would march, or wouldn’t march.

“In the meantime,” said Lentulus Crus, “I think we ought to make sure Italia herself is well guarded and properly defended. For which reasons I propose that we send legates endowed with proconsular imperiums to all parts of Italia. Their first duty will be to enlist soldiers—we don’t have enough troops under arms to distribute everywhere.”

“I’ll take one of those,” said Ahenobarbus instantly. “No need to go to my provinces this very moment, better to make sure Italia is prepared first. So give me charge of the Adriatic coast below Picenum. I’ll travel the Via Valeria and pick up whole legions of volunteers among the Marsi and the Paeligni, who are in my clientele.”

“Custody of the Via Aemilia Scaura, the Via Aurelia and the Via Clodia—which is to say, the north on the Etrurian side—I nominate should go to Lucius Scribonius Libo!” said Pompey eagerly.

That provoked a few grins. The marriage between Pompey’s elder son, Gnaeus, and the daughter of Appius Claudius Censor had neither prospered nor lasted. After it ended in divorce, young Gnaeus Pompey married Scribonius Libo’s daughter, a match which did not please his father but did please Gnaeus, who had insisted on it. This left Pompey with the task of finding a good job for a mediocre man. Hence Etruria, not likely to be Caesar’s focus.

Quintus Minucius Thermus inherited the Via Flaminia, which was the north on the eastern side in Umbria, and was instructed to station himself in Iguvium.

Nepotism came into the picture again when Pompey suggested that his close cousin, Gaius Lucilius Hirrus, be given duty in Picenum at Labienus’s hometown of Camerinum. Picenum, of course, was Pompey’s own fief—and closest to Caesar in Ravenna—so other men were sent there too, Lentulus Spinther the consular to Ancona and Publius Attius Varus the ex-praetor to Pompey’s hometown of Auximum.

And poor discouraged Cicero, present at these meetings because they were being held outside the pomerium, was ordered to go to Campania and recruit.

“There!” said Lentulus Crus at the end of it, jubilantly. “Once Caesar realizes we’ve done all of this, he’ll think twice about marching! He won’t dare!”